


Whatever I do (I spiral down to you)

by fleaflofloyd



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26538073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleaflofloyd/pseuds/fleaflofloyd
Summary: There's no answer.No footsteps back down the stairs.Just silence.---Title and chapter titles from a bunch of Flyte songs. Go check them out, cos they're one of the best English bands around right now.NOT a part of the 'I never thought...' universe. Blame Beth/Franklin for this.WARNING: Certain imagery may cause distress. Its not graphic at all, simply symbolic, but there nonetheless. Take care.
Relationships: Lucille Anderson/Valerie Dyer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. In the blinking (of a blind eye)

The moonlight.

How it shines in here.

She'd removed the curtains the night she'd moved her things, away from the telltale signs of concern from Trixie. From the others. The space had been needed; a reprieve from having to keep up the lie.

She'd reasoned with herself to give it some time. Let the ghosts of Poplar congregate, and then vanish.

But she's only swapped them out for something closer.

Someone closer.

An entity, solid and fixed, but never touchable. Not in the way it mattered.

Not in the way Val needs.

She's downstairs, moving from group to group, friend to comrade to colleague. To pastor from dedicated follower. 

To husband-to-be.

Valerie sighs, slumping to half sit on the windowsill.

This balancing act of loving her from afar, of watching the streets of Poplar demolish themselves and reassemble and suddenly become something unknown, something foreign to her, is going to destroy her.

It's begun to stick somewhere deep inside, someplace right in the very middle of her, where a blood-stained uniform and a lighter and an oven full of banknotes are buried.

She could do with that coathanger. 

Rip this despair from herself, have it come out with her heart and be done with it.

What does she need hers for?

Hearts are for people who can love freely, and she simply cannot.

And yet the feeling remains, internalised, growing with the sun and seeping into the night.

Into her dreams.

She'd been hoping time and silence, of which she'd grown accustomed to in that rundown shit of a place her Gran called home, would somehow suffice here too. That a little reflection in this inescapably drafty room might flip a switch in her mind, make her realise that her feelings were futile, and therefore unworthy of feeling.

It's only frozen the love into her, however, alongside the grief. Only strengthened it into steel.

The world is moving on around her, forever somewhere else, forever for everyone else. 

Her fraught silence has begun to stretch, and the ending is no longer in sight. No longer a week, or a month, or a reflective, moonlit night away.

Nothing will end this--

There's a quiet knock on the attic door, measured, in a way she's too fond of.

There's no mistaking it's Lucille.

"Val, I just wanted to check on you--those bacon and banana rolls aren't going to eat themselves."

Her head drops, and she closes her eyes.

Lie. Lie. Lie.

"I'm just having a bit of a time out, I'll be down in a half-hour, yeah?"

There's no answer.

No footsteps back down the stairs.

Just silence.

Just a door and the space, always the space in between.

"Valerie, is everything okay? You've been looking ever so glum lately and I've been w--"

"I'm fine," she interrupts, eyes still on the full moon, behind the dirty pane of glass.

More silence, saturating.

It beckons her, a siren sending sailors to their doom.

And then, all at once, noise in the form of a door opening and closing.

Valerie looks back, and oh how she wishes she hadn't.

Lucille is there, in her yellow dress, the moonlight hitting her, ethereal and pure.

Her breath catches in her throat.

_You look...exactly like you._

"Valerie, I'd like you to come back downstairs and...I don't wish for you to be down in the dumps at my engagement party. We can talk tomorrow, if you like, about what's been bothering you, but for tonight I just want--"

Val finds her tongue, moving of its own volition. "I have a headache, that's all--the endless chatter over the music was hurting my--"

"Just stop," Lucille's voice jars suddenly, her face hardening in the moonlight. "You've been using that excuse over and over again for the last two months. I'm tired of that lie."

The edge there, the brazenness of the statement, in direct contrast to eight weeks of timidity, of always backing off, ignites a flame under the ice inside Valerie.

"Then what would you prefer?" she asks roughly, standing to face Lucille. "The truth?"

"Yes. Something hasn't been right with you since...I know grief takes time to work through, but you've isolated yourself away from us, away from me, and I'm worried about you."

Val laughs humourlessly. "But not that worried to not get engaged, hmm?"

Lucille looks at her for a long moment.

Then she's turning away, Valerie already in upcoming relief that this hasn't imploded, that she's going now, will be gone in just--

Lucille flicks the light on instead of opening the door. 

The shadows in the corners of the room darken as the space between them brightens. The moon's window-shaped glow is swallowed by the hanging light, solitary in its effort, leaving Lucille in the harsher illumination. 

"Val..."

Lucille's voice is gentle and emploring, and it cuts straight through her.

This is the girl she's in love with. The one she fell for before she'd even known it. 

If she'd been aware, she would've left long ago. Before this whole sorry mess. The chasm between them had once been a field of buttercups, tended to with care, with consideration. 

Nothing more was ever going to grow there, she'd realised. Nothing more in the quietly constricting confines of friendship.

Her mind had known, but her heart had--

"Valerie, where do you keep going to? I can help."

She's gotten closer. In the middle of the room now, hand out, palm down, like Val's some sort of frightened animal.

"Talk to me," she urges softly, eyes hopeful and glistening.

It's a coathanger. It shreds her heart to pieces.

She decides then.

Right at that moment.

Leaving will be the only way to vanquish this from inside of her.

In the morning, before anyone is up.

Yes.

A letter of resignation on Sister Julienne's desk, to be found, explanation given:

_Poplar isn't the same._

_I'm not the same anymore._

She isn't.

The ghosts have made sure of that.

This beautiful being in front of her has gripped and ripped and nothing can be the same.

Nothing.

Lie. Lie. Lie.

Valerie lets her shoulders sag, hanging her head.

"I don't want to be a bother during your party--can we talk tomorrow over breakfast? I'm just...lashing out 'cos I'm in pain."

She hears the floorboards creak, and looks up to find her within arm's reach.

She might as well be on the moon.

"Are you sure, I can sit down with you now and--"

"Honestly, I did have a headache, so I think going to bed might be my best option. We can talk in the morning, I'll tell you everything, okay?"

There's a moment of uncertainty, in which Val holds her breath, waiting for Lucille to believe her, or push the first domino down.

But then Lucille nods and smiles warmly at her.

That cuts even worse.

"Okay. Omelette or English breakfast?"

She's retreating back towards the door now, Val watching as the shadows start to stretch over her.

"Omelette. Definitely."

"8 am too early?"

"That's fine, Lucille. Talk then."

She's treated to one last dazzling smile.

That one is the real coathanger.

The door closes, and she slumps down towards the bed, eyes flooding with tears.

She covers her mouth as a sob tries to break free, violent and guttural. 

It pours out of her, soundless against the marred skin of her thumb.

A scar healed, from before Christmas.

Valerie laughs bitterly in a cry, the memory swirling about her.

_A second quicker and that car could've taken you out._

It would've hurt less.

\---


	2. Just a little white lie (there in all that you do)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She prays for guidance._
> 
> _For her soul._
> 
> _For forgiveness._
> 
> \---
> 
> Title and chapter titles from a bunch of Flyte songs. Go check them out, cos they're one of the best English bands around right now.
> 
> NOT a part of the 'I never thought...' universe.
> 
> \---

(His first mistake is drinking a third of the rum before she even gets there.

Her first mistake is asking to have presents and dinner before he says what he needs to.

Their second mistake, a joint effort, is the bottle sitting on the table between them, within easy reach.

Cyril can handle his drink. He's only got a bit of a buzz going.

Lucille cannot.

The next mistake, the one that will always stick in his mind, because he's not drunk enough to forget yet, is the fact that he lets her drink it in the first place.

"I saw you and her the night of the fireworks."

He watches the recognition come across her face. 

She knows exactly what he's talking about.

Her next words surprise him.

He'll always wonder how much of it was her and how much of it was the rum.

"It doesn't matter. I'm with you. I love you."

Believing her is the biggest mistake, until--)

\---

They don't even make it to the bed. 

There's a pine needle from the Christmas tree in her back during it, signalling a pain response, something to match the one between her legs.

She lets him keep going, thrusting above her, because it seems appropriate.

Correct.

A lesser sin than the one that's been bothering her.

She can bear this one. Bear the pine needle and the sting below in exchange for it.

The rum has loosened her senses.

It's done nothing to erase the alarming ocean blue of her eyes.

She pulls Cyril closer.

Kisses him as he continues to shove his way inside of her.

"I love you."

It remains a lie.

She knows he knows it too.

(No amount of alcohol will cover it up.)

\---

_Lucille never sees the silhouette framed in the hallway when she sneaks back into Nonnatus in the pre-dawn chill._

_The answer is right in front of her eyes as she watches Valerie repeatedly climb the stairs, arms carrying her belongings to a quieter, and colder place._

\---

The red fails to come three weeks later.

Her body is like clockwork. 

Every twenty-nine days. 

It's been that way since she was fourteen, and alarmed by her mother's words:

_"If you bring shame upon this family, upon God, you will have no home here. Is that understood Lucille?"_

She'd nodded, keenly aware of how serious her mother was.

Now, in the bathroom of Nonnatus, four thousand miles away from her, she feels the sharp sting of a slap across her face.

(She traces the imaginary hand-shaped mark later, as the tears leak onto her pillow.)

\---

She slips on her grandmother's wedding ring that Saturday and catches the bus to Stratford.

Finds the clinic on High Street.

They address her as Mrs Anderson, making the assumption.

She knows it'll be two weeks before she'll know for sure.

The kind secretary tells her they can call if she leaves a number.

She declines, working her way through a hard done by story of a recent patient, with no access to a phone.

She'll come back to confirm it.

(She feels a certainty in her chest already, an inevitability to the situation that only increases as the days go by.)

\---

She prays for guidance.

For her soul.

For forgiveness.

For it to--

No.

_No._

She will never wish for that.

Never.

She's going to love this child. Pray and repent and do everything in her power to make sure her baby comes into the world safe and loved.

Always.

Elsie Dyer and her actions come to mind, nonetheless.

She won't consider that for herself either.

Lucille shakes her head and wiggles the pins and needles out of her legs. Shakes out her hands around her Bible.

Another half-hour.

And then compline after dinner.

She can repent and ask for forgiveness and make this right.

Make this righteous.

She can do that.

(It doesn't stop her from dreaming of blood staining the whitest linen imaginable, Valerie helping her to scrub, but neither of them ever getting it clean.)

\---

_Lucille fails to see the lone figure in the hall, or in the lounge, or on the stairs in these two weeks, taking on board her increased rate of prayer._

_Internalising her guilt, thinking she's to blame._

_Slowly severing their link with her own increase in solitary confinement._

\---

She finds out.

Gives herself a moment to cry at the bus stop, before drying her eyes.

Goes straight to Cyril's place to tell him.

His only words are, "We probably should get married, then."

She accepts.

No fanfare.

No excitement, like she'd imagined as a girl.

They set the plan in stone.

Engagement.

Wedding.

Baby announcement.

Marriage.

(Life together.)

\---

She phones her parents the next morning when she's on call. Purposely leaves it to the stroke of four, knowing her parents will be in bed. Knowing she needs to be quick.

"Mum, I've been dating someone for the past year, he's a kind man and he proposed."

"Is he a man of God, Lucille?"

"He is. I'm sorry I kept this to myself, I just wanted to make sure he was..."

"The one?" 

Lucille blinks back the water that blurs her eyes at the hopeful tone in her mother's voice.

"Yes. He is."

(She's lied to her mother before, the Lord knows she has, but nothing to this extent.)

\---

There's a brief delay in excitement from Trixie and Phyllis when she tells the group of Cyril's proposal, a second or two of stillness that tells Lucille they're aware of something else going on.

But Sister Frances is already squeezing her arm, congratulating her, and she distracts herself with the other's happy reactions, to avoid it.

Valerie smiles at her from behind everyone, but it doesn't meet her eyes.

(She's gone by the time Lucille looks back her way.)

\---

She climbs the rickety stairs to where Valerie is, with the intent to...

With the intent to...

She stops halfway up, and sinks down on them.

She cannot possibly say it.

Valerie has been a million miles away anyway. 

Downtrodden since she moved up to the attic. Much too quiet at lunch and dinner, despite everyone's efforts to include her in conversation. 

Lucille's been avoiding asking her directly about it. Trixie has offered up no explanation either, despite being the one to change the gauze around the base of Valerie's thumb.

_"Lucille, I'm okay, I'm okay, I just scraped my hand on the cobblestones, you can put that worry away now..."_

It had been more than just worry.

Sheer terror had flung her through the Blackwell's door and down the street that night.

The car had clipped the beginning of Valerie's front wheel, flinging her out of the way and onto her hand, and Lucille hadn't been able to sleep that night from the sudden fear coursing through her veins.

She'd been daydreaming, she'd said. A second quicker and...

Lucille wipes at her eyes.

That had been the start. 

That had been the start of her mind beginning to understand what had occurred three nights before. What she'd felt as the fireworks and bonfire - as the entirety of the world - had slid off into nothing at the sight of Valerie looking back.

It had settled somewhere deep inside her gut, the knowledge that she felt something deeper than friendship for her.

She'd been trying to rid herself of it with Cyril and the rum and letting him touch her.

And now she's...

She doesn't know what she's doing.

She cannot tell her.

Trixie and Phyllis's pause from earlier comes to mind.

She won't ask them about it, because she doesn't want to know.

If they know about the pregnancy, then this whole plan could--

Maybe they know about Valerie.

The thought freezes her.

No.

_No._

It can't be her feelings for--

She hasn't shown anything of the--

But Cyril had seen.

Cyril had known that night, and every night afterwards.

Her eyes well with tears as her heart races.

Surely not.

She's--

It has to be the pregnancy. It has to be.

She'd forgotten to close the bathroom door the other morning before losing the contents of her stomach. Trixie would've been within earshot in her room, and prone to chatter.

It has to be that.

It has to.

Because the other option is--

She can't confirm either of them.

She's a purveyor of sins in this house of worship.

A hypocrite of the highest form.

She can't tell them anything until she has a ring on her finger.

She has one person to turn to.

The man she's engaged to.

The man she'll need to learn to love, if she's to rewrite their error in judgement.

God will forgive.

She just needs to salvage the scraps of kindness, of familiarity, of care she's felt for him, and build it all into a foundation strong enough to hold the two of them together.

The three of them.

It's what she has to work with.

(It's what she has to do.)

\---

The dream morphs, her and Valerie scrubbing, hands never clean, the reddened stain solidifying thicker over their hands.

"Keep going," Lucille tells her, even though she knows it's no use.

"You're out of order," Valerie replies, as the red creeps past her elbows.

"I can fix it," she says.

She repeats it and repeats it and repeats it as the blood defies gravity, flowing up over their shoulders, across their chests, up their necks.

Valerie opens her mouth and the blood flows in freely, choking her, choking them--

Lucille jars out of the dream, grasping at her throat as she fights for air--

Her eyes dart to her roommate, fearing a discovery.

But Phyllis sleeps on, unaware of Lucille's heavy load.

(Lucille will hate her for it, briefly, before another wave of guilt crashes over her heart.)

\---

Trixie's hand finds her arm in amongst her church friends, drawing her gaze.

She lets herself be drawn away.

Her friend is notably concerned.

"Valerie's disappeared upstairs. Perhaps you checking on--"

"Of course," Lucille says, wishing for anything else.

She tries to quell her uneasy stomach with a few deep breaths, gripping the railing so hard her knuckles turn white.

Valerie dismisses her concerns through the door.

Lucille hears the weariness in her voice. 

The thought resurfaces once more in her mind, that Valerie's woes are...

That this has stemmed from...

Lucille lets out a breath.

She remembers those eyes, sparkling with colours as the blue there mesmerised. 

They'd sparked with something, hidden from them under the guise of friendship, and now it's blooming...

But she can't.

She can't keep remembering it, if she's to...

Build a life with Cyril.

She steps into the room anyway, to try and ease the guilt weighing on her chest.

Ease the sin.

Valerie is at the window, bathed in moonlight, her yellow cardigan now covering her white shirt.

She says she has a headache. It's a lie so well worn in that it grates at Lucille's patience.

Her best friend can't even tell her--

"Just stop. You've been using that excuse over and over again for the last two months. I'm tired of that lie."

She is.

They haven't shared breakfast or dessert in so long. Sat with one another over biscuits and a cuppa, or rum and chocolate. Spent time together reading or kept one another company on call.

The casual touches are gone. Kind words are gone. The banter is gone.

The warmth is gone.

She misses her.

She misses all of it.

Valerie barely looks her way anymore and it--

"Then what would you prefer?" Val suddenly asks, standing. "The truth?"

_Yes._

_Tell me you love me and we can..._

She pushes the thought away as the uneasiness in her stomach grows. It's the morning sickness making its way into the night.

She needs to--

Her mouth speaks the words she needs to say. 

It's Valerie's grief over her grandmother that is the problem.

It's not this forbidden thing.

She can't allow it to be that.

She tells her she's worried about her, and it's the truth.

"But not that worried to not get engaged, hmm?" Valerie spits out.

Lucille stares at her. The moon is backlit over Valerie now, obscuring her face in shadow.

She just wants to see her.

For something to be real between them again.

She flicks the light on and sees the dark half-circles under her eyes, her skin pale from the cold.

From her grief.

_Yes._

Grief.

Even though she remembers nearly three weeks of Valerie getting back to it. Coming back to life, slowly, between her return from her gran's place and the car clipping her.

A cheeky smile given in the Blackwell's kitchen, weightless and faithful.

She's bogged down now, in this cold, cold room.

Lucille shivers, feeling the chill sink into her bones.

She moves closer, emploring Valerie to talk to her.

To be the one to say something.

Anything about this thing between them.

Before--

Val's shoulders slump and she drops her head, and Lucille feels hope surge through her that maybe, just maybe--

_Please say something._

_Please._

Valerie asks if they can talk tomorrow, and the world realigns itself on its correct axis.

The nausea vanishes.

Her feet move her closer on their own.

"Are you sure, I can sit down with you now and--"

Valerie persuades her towards morning.

And she is persuaded.

She's persuaded so much that she spends the rest of the night believing she can sort this mess out.

Have Valerie and her baby and Cyril too.

(A cake eaten, before it's even owned.)

\--- 

She's pouring the omelette mixture into the frying pan the next morning when Sister Julienne appears, face as white as her guimpe, a letter in her hand.

"Nurse Anderson..."

(The omelette burns in the following moments, forgotten, along with her heart.)

\---

She demands they look for her.

Nearly loses her job over her insolence. Her anger.

Her fury.

She wouldn't just...

But she has.

The resignation letter is succinct. To the point.

The phone call they get two days later from Valerie's mother ends all speculation.

The blue-eyed woman is on a ship bound for Australia, to start again.

It's an end.

An end to her anger, masking her pain.

It hurts.

It hurts more than she can ever tell her friends.

(She suspects they already know.)

\---

They're married a week and a half later.

Lucille tries to stay present that night as he undresses her, as he touches her. As she sets herself in his lap.

The sadness creeps in despite her best efforts, unwanted and entirely hers to carry. It's a simple reaction to the pretending she's accomplished during the day, the smiling she's had to do to sell the lie.

Weeks of deception culminating in a physical ache.

Her eyes water as she latches her chin over his too large shoulder and her arms around his too large back.

So he doesn't see.

She thinks of blue eyes instead.

Delicate fingers inside of her, instead of the length of him. Softer shoulders and arms. Lighter skin. A smaller frame to fit around, closer to her somehow, closer than this substitute body she clashes against.

Two jigsaw pieces, slotting together.

It's Valerie lifting her up, so she can pivot into Lucille on her knees. It's Valerie's shoulder and neck she kisses and sucks at. It's Valerie's back she claws and grabs, encouraging her on, upward and higher.

Deeper.

She lets out a moan.

"You feel so good," a feminine voice says, a voice she knows so well it's fused into her soul.

It's Val's hand palming her breast, caught between their sweat shimmering bodies.

"Faster," Lucille says, moaning, driving herself against those fingers, that palm, holding herself tighter to Valerie's hips as they...

It's love. 

She's making love to her, with her, as her heartbeat continues to quicken. As the throb inside of her matches it.

The way her heart had sped up that night.

No rhyme or reason. No right or wrong.

Just them, together.

Just them.

Only them.

Fingers slide faster, hips rock faster, and two bodies meld into one.

Lucille moans her pleasure, repeatedly now, every few seconds, as Valerie takes her up to the precipice, up to the, up to the--

"Faster, Valerie--please. Faster--" 

Her name falls from Lucille's lips at the top of the edge, along with a stream of curses as she reaches--

Then her body is shuddering her release as the wave drowns her in sweet ecstasy.

Valerie grunts, but it's all wrong, too deep, too masculine, too--

She feels him finish, gripping her waist too tightly, pinching.

Lucille stays slumped over his shoulder, trying to catch her breath as she registers her wet face.

It's all been an illusion.

A wish, unfulfilled.

"Think I might go have a shower," Cyril tells her, already depositing her to the side.

She pretends she's asleep when he finally comes back to bed.

He never mentions her saying Valerie's name in the morning.

(It won't be the last time.)

\---

She's unpacking her books and setting them in the bookcase in Cyril's lounge -- their lounge now -- when she sees it.

She flips open the pages of _The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson_ to find that it's an envelope.

Her name is written in pencil on it, with an added addendum in sloppy blue pen:

_I felt it right from that scraped knee._

_I'll feel it until my last breath._

_Forgive me._

The air in the room is sucked out immediately.

Valerie loves her. It was returned.

Her mind falls back through time to a warm grin and a Germaline covered latex glove.

How Valerie had insisted she wear her nightgown and pyjamas that night.

The kindness emanating from her, second nature, but already beginning to matter.

Her eyes dart to the ring around her finger, a blinding beacon, a remembrance of where she is and what this envelope should mean to her.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And yet...

She hurries to open it, and begins to read.

> Dear Lucille,
> 
> I'm sitting at my Gran's little table, with much to tell you. I'm afraid to get to that, I must start at the beginning. Cliche, I know, but necessary.

Lucille's eyes widen at the time of the letter, much earlier than she--

> When I was young, I had a best friend called Sally Spencer. Her and I were inseparable, two peas in our own little pod. My mother used to tell people, "There ain't no Sally without Vally." I was an awkward kid, never particularly getting on with the girls in my class. They seemed superior in all aspects compared to me. Sally was the first friend I made, to be honest. A true friend. We kept to ourselves. We played board games and talked or read for hours, preferring the solitude of our rooms to outside. Mrs Spencer would get cross with us sometimes, and send us outside. My Mum never did mind, so we were generally at mine.
> 
> Before Sally, I think I was quite lonely. My sisters got along better together, despite the difference in age. I was too quiet for them, too much of a saint for their antics. I was on the receiving end of their tricks, mostly. An easy target. It wasn't really until I met Sally that I found the confidence I lacked. She was a welcome reprieve from my loneliness. She was wonderful.
> 
> I've gotten to the hard part now, Lucille. Please know that the next part I write has only ever been discussed between Gran and myself. She felt it was important to say.

Lucille swallows thickly, her heart beating wildly, even though she has a fair idea of what's coming.

> Sally and I were close. We'd been friends for five years when something shifted around my twelfth birthday. Our closeness suddenly seemed overwhelming, like I might drown in it. Profoundly important, like I might die without it. Hugs had come easy. A hand held. A tickle fight. They'd been so easy, and now they were weighted with something unsaid between us.

> > Sally kissed me the night after her birthday. It felt right. Like my mind had finally caught up with my body.

Lucille rereads the two paragraphs again, once, twice, her mind focusing in on the word overwhelming.

Because that's how she feels right now.

She's crying, shedding tears for this Valerie she's never known. 

She reads on, wiping her eyes in a failed attempt to clear her vision.

> Her father got a transfer to Warrington two weeks later, some last minute thing Sally had known nothing about. They packed up and were gone before I knew what was what.
> 
> I was devastated. I moped around for a long time after that.
> 
> But life has a way I guess. I'd always enjoyed school and learning, so I concentrated on that instead. Got going again.
> 
> I saw Sally the first day of army training. It seemed like fate had brought us back together once more, after years apart. We clicked right back into place.
> 
> The feelings I'd had for her were still there. She felt the same still. We picked our moments, sneaking around the barracks. It was amazing.
> 
> I told you about the Sister that hassled me in the army. I'm afraid I left out some details when telling you about her. I'm sorry for the omission Lucille. The truth is that Sister had her suspicions about Sally and I. What we were to each other. She bullied both of us because of it. It wasn't just because we were too rough for nursing. It was because we loved each other.
> 
> We bore her abuse for close to a year before Sally decided she'd had her share.
> 
> I never saw her again.

She rereads the line over and over again, her eyes pooling so much now it's soaking into the paper.

If only she'd read this on the 23rd of December...

When Valerie had written it...

Things would be different.

Maybe they might've even been happy.

Lucille inhales a shuddering breath and continues.

> I choose to lock it inside myself. To protect myself. From heartbreak and from outsiders judgments. I'd been burned already.
> 
> My Gran has only recently brought the subject up again, now that she's facing her own mortality.
> 
> I thought getting past Sally and that Sister was the hardest thing I'd ever do. I'm afraid it's watching Gran die.
> 
> I'm afraid it's also going to be the following words I write to you.
> 
> The truth is, plainly as I feel it, I love you.

Lucille breaks then, slumping forward to the hardwood floor. The sobs escape from her soul, her lungs burning for air.

_Come on, chick._

_Just breathe._

Valerie's voice in her head, soft and comforting, draws out a wordless yell from Lucille's mouth, reverberating off the floor and back into her ears.

She lets it all go, gripping the pages in a fist, for a girl lost to her.

Her lost love.

\---

(In fifteen minutes, when she's calmed herself down, she'll read the rest.

See all the ways Valerie has considered their friendship. Has considered her feelings.

_I'm confident, however, that I've always loved you. Right from that scraped knee._

_I just didn't realise._

A fresh set of tears will come, but Lucille will keep going, able to see it for what it is.

What it was.

What it could, and never will be.)

\---

_I'll feel it until my last breath._

_Forgive me._

\---


End file.
